


walls yet to climb

by thistidalwave



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:58:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12937734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave
Summary: Dmitry and Anya spend their first Christmas together in Vienna.





	walls yet to climb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lirazel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/gifts).



> Big thanks to Hannah sluggysparkle for dragging me into this fandom and having feelings with me.
> 
> Happy holidays, Lirazel, I hope you enjoy!

“I wish we could go home for Christmas,” Anya says.

Dmitry looks up from his newspaper. Anya is staring out the window next to the little table tucked into the corner of their small rented room in Vienna. “To Russia?” he asks, wondering if this is the general homesickness they both feel all the time or a genuine desire to not be in Austria for Christmas. He hadn’t known Anya particularly cared about the holidays.

Anya nods. “Or at least… I should at least be with my grandmother, shouldn’t I?” 

“There’s not much time to get back to Paris,” Dmitry says, already considering train schedules and wondering how much the fare would be with only two days notice. “Why are you only bringing this up now?” 

“Never mind,” Anya says. She’s still looking out the window. “It’s just sentiment, anyway. My grandmother will have obligations to attend to.”

“We can go,” Dmitry says. He’s reasonably confident about it; he can argue his way into anything, after all, especially if it’s for Anya. 

Anya looks at him, a single eyebrow raised. “You don’t think the trains are full?” 

“There’s always the engine room,” Dmitry says, hoping to make her smile. She shakes her head instead, and Dmitry frowns. 

“You can’t just bend to my every whim,” Anya says. There’s an edge to her tone that Dmitry knows is her gunning for a fight, but the words get to him anyway. 

He puts down the newspaper on the table and glares at her. “You think that’s what I do?” 

“I know it is,” Anya says. “You haven’t decided a single thing since we left Paris. It’s always yes, Anya, sure, Anya, we’ll go wherever you want, Anya. Like you’re afraid of scaring me off.” 

It’s too close to the truth for comfort, and that has Dmitry bristling. “Why shouldn’t I make sure you’re happy?”

“You don’t have to try so damn hard to do that,” Anya snaps. “Argue with me, for heaven’s sake! Have a backbone!” 

“We argue all the time!” Dmitry protests.

“Not about anything that matters!” Anya shouts. She sits back in her chair, huffing loudly, and crosses her arms. 

Dmitry looks at her for a moment, watching her blow away the hair that’s fallen in her face and fiddle with the fabric of her dress. “Fine,” he says. “Next we’ll go to the basement I’ve been planning to trap you in. You’ll hate it there, I promise. I’ll start a new argument every day. Every hour, if you want.”

Anya gives him a stony look, but Dmitry can see the hint of a smile trying to escape the straight line she’s pressed her lips into. “There you go, trying to please me again,” she says, but it’s a lot softer.

“I’m insufferable, I know,” Dmitry says. He holds out a hand across the table, and Anya takes it. “You don’t really mind that you’re deciding where we go, do you?” 

He’s reasonably sure he’s right, but he waits until Anya shakes her head before continuing.

“So what’s this really about?” 

Anya looks out the window again. “I guess I’m just feeling… nostalgic.” She laughs slightly and glances back at Dmitry. “It’s weird that I can even say that.” 

Dmitry smiles at her. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

“I don’t know,” Anya says, but she looks thoughtful, so Dmitry waits. “It’s just… sometimes I feel so guilty for forgetting my family. And then—” She stops, biting her lip.

“What?” Dmitry asks. He squeezes her hand lightly.

“I left them,” she says. “I left them again when I gave it all up. Am I really my father’s daughter if I can’t even…”

“Of course you are,” Dmitry says firmly. “I’ll always look at you and see a Grand Duchess.”

Anya frowns and pulls her hand away, shaking her head. “That’s the problem,” she says, all the anger back in her voice, “because I’m not. She was a dream, remember? You can’t be constantly trying to make the Grand Duchess Anastasia happy.”

“She’s _you_ ,” Dmitry insists.

“No,” Anya snaps as she stands, “she’s not.”

“But—”

“I’m not her, Dmitry,” Anya interrupts. “If I was, do you think I would’ve run away from responsibility for a boy?”

Dmitry stops short, halfway through reaching toward Anya. His hand closes on nothing, and he swallows hard. “Anya, come on.”

“I’m going out for a bit,” Anya says, voice firm. She grabs her coat and scarf and opens the door. “I’ll be back later.”

“Anya…” Dmitry repeats, but he lets it trail off into silence. He doesn’t know what he was going to say, and she’s already gone, anyway. 

 

It’s late when Anya returns, late enough that Dmitry was starting to get worried. He knows it was irrational—Anya can handle herself—but he’s gradually getting used to all his feelings about Anya being irrational. 

He closes the book he was reading and watches as she takes off her winter clothes, carefully hanging them up by the door. She’s beautiful like this, lit by the soft yellow of a single lamp, and Dmitry watches as the shadows shift across her face. She could be beautiful anywhere, doing anything, and Dmitry’s heart hurts to think that she regrets that she chose to be here with him. 

When she’s down to her dress and stocking feet, Anya hesitates, then visibly sets her jaw and steps toward the bed. “I got you this,” Anya says, holding out a small metal tin. She’s looking down and off to the side, like she can’t bear to meet Dmitry’s eyes, and Dmitry hates it.

“What is it?” Dmitry asks, taking it and carefully pulling off the lid. The question is immediately rendered pointless as the distinct smell of tangerines and chocolate hits his nose. It’s exactly the kind of luxury Dmitry loves but never buys himself. From Anya, who knows that and would have had to scout out both things separately in a city they’ve hardly explored yet, it’s a clear apology. 

“You didn’t have to,” he tells her, putting the lid back on the tin. 

“I know,” Anya says. She shrugs, still looking away. “It’s not fair to you to say I’m betraying my family when… you’re my family, too.”

Something in Dmitry’s chest swells, and he can’t speak for a long moment. “Hey,” he says when he regains the ability, setting the tin to the side and pushing himself up to his knees. He puts a tentative hand on Anya’s arm and then, when she doesn’t move, carefully touches the side of her face. She looks at him finally, biting the inside of her lip as she looks down at him, and he smiles involuntarily. “Come to bed, okay?” 

Anya nods. “Okay.” 

 

They’re lying in the dark, Anya’s knees tucked up behind Dmitry’s and her nose brushing the back of his neck, when she whispers, “I miss Petersburg.” 

Dmitry reaches for her hand and laces their fingers together. “Me too,” he says. “Especially Petersburg during the holidays. Growing up, I loved the Christmas tree in the square. I used to stand at the bottom and tilt my head all the way back to see the top.” 

“You wanted to climb it, didn’t you,” Anya says.

“ _Wanted_ to?” Dmitry jokes. “Who do you think I am? I scaled that thing like a monkey. I lived up there for a week.”

He’s gratified when Anya laughs, burying her face in his back, and he waits until she’s stopped before he gives in to temptation and disentangles them so he can turn over and look at Anya. She makes a soft noise of protest and moves in close again, taking both his hands and holding them between hers. 

They’re quiet for a moment, just breathing, before Anya says quietly, “I keep thinking about the lights on Nevsky Prospekt. I remember them easily, of course, from Petrograd, and I loved them then. But I have other memories, too… it’s like I’m looking at the lights through a frosted window, and I swear I can hear my brother laughing…”

Dmitry wishes he could do something to help pull Anya back from wherever she goes when her voice gets distant like that. It’s probably a selfish thought, though; Anya can’t live in the past, but she’s already forgotten it once, and it’s not fair to ask her to do it again. 

“Tell me about it,” he says instead. “What was the Romanov Christmas like?” 

Anya hums thoughtfully. “Elaborate,” she says. “Like most things, I suppose. I remember my mother decorating tree after tree in the palace, and we were only allowed to touch the one in our playroom, except it spun, so we were scared to.”

Dmitry laughs. “I can’t imagine you being scared.” 

“And I’ll thank you not to try,” Anya says. “There was always so much anticipation around Christmas. Wrapping presents for the guard, making presents for each other… I remember getting all bundled up over our nice Christmas clothes so we could go skating, and me refusing to hold my older sister’s hands like my father told me because I was sure I could skate on my own.”

“That sounds more like you,” Dmitry says. 

Anya laughs slightly. “I guess so,” she agrees. “But it still feels like a dream sometimes. I remember Christmas in Petrograd so much better. I used to love the way the city seemed to come even more alive, even when it was a hard winter, which it felt like it always was… there was this bakery that I swear should’ve gone out of business with how much food that elderly lady gave away.”

“Mrs. Petrovyh?” Dmitry asks, surprised.

“Yes,” Anya says, her tone matching his. “You knew her?” 

Dmitry nods. “I thought I’d just charmed her. She always told me it was our little holiday secret.”

Anya laughs. “You can be remarkably unobservant when you want to be, Dima.” 

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” Dmitry says loftily, but the sentiment has him wondering how many times he might have missed something important because he was too distracted by his latest shiny scheme. Could he have walked past Anya as she was going to see Mrs. Petrovyh and never noticed? How many times would he have done it again if he hadn’t heard the rumours about Anastasia? 

“Do you think our paths would have crossed even if… even if everything hadn’t happened?” Anya asks, somehow on exactly the same wavelength. “Not just my grandmother searching for me, but even if there wasn’t a revolution?” 

“Yes,” Dmitry says immediately. “I would have made sure of it. I don’t think there’s a single universe where we pass each other in the crowds a hundred times and never meet.”

In the dim light, Dmitry can only just see the curve of Anya’s smile. “So sure of yourself,” she murmurs. 

“I’m a very good pretender,” Dmitry says, dropping his voice to a whisper as well. “Some might call me an idealist, but I just say someone’s gotta have the ideas.” 

“And you don’t bow to just anyone, after all,” Anya teases.

“Never,” Dmitry agrees. 

 

Dmitry wakes early on Christmas morning and sneaks out of bed to go get breakfast. When he returns, Anya is still asleep, and he crouches beside the bed to nudge her. She makes a noise of protest and hits him with her pillow before rolling over and tucking it under her head again.

“Time to get up, Anya,” Dmitry tells her, leaning over and kissing her cheek. “It’s Christmas.”

“Yes, so you should let me sleep,” Anya grumbles.

“I can’t, we have plans,” Dmitry says patiently, pulling all the covers back quickly so that Anya doesn’t have time to grab them. 

“No, we don’t,” Anya says, but her eyes are open now. “Or if we do, they’re all happening in this bed.”

Dmitry smiles at her. “We can’t go skating in bed,” he says.

Anya sits up and rubs at her eyes. “We don’t have skates,” she points out.

“Don’t we?” Dmitry asks. He pulls one of the skates out of the bag he’d hidden under the table late the night before and offers it to her. “ _Schastlivogo Rozhdestva_ , Anya.”

Anya takes it, staring, and Dmitry can see the moment when she fully wakes up and realizes what’s going on. She looks back at him, eyes wide, and says, “Skating?” 

Dmitry nods. “And breakfast hot chocolate if you get up.”

“Why didn’t you lead with that?” Anya asks, grinning, and Dmitry laughs. 

Once Anya is out of bed, it doesn’t take long for them to get bundled up and venture out into the cold Christmas morning air. Anya holds her cup of hot chocolate close with one hand and inspects the skates Dmitry handed over to her with the other. “When did you have time to get these?” she asks.

“Yesterday, when you were busy making friends in the merchant’s row,” Dmitry says. “Also, I should warn you that I don’t know how to skate.”

Anya laughs, then frowns. “I don’t know if I do anymore either.”

“Great, I’ll just send someone ahead to the hospital, then,” Dmitry jokes. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Anya says confidently. 

The ice rink covers almost the entirety of the square outside of Vienna’s city hall. There are lights strung overhead, still bright in the dim early morning, turning the mostly empty ice purple and blue and red. 

“It’s gorgeous,” Anya says as they sit down on a bench to put their skates on, and Dmitry nods.

Skates on, they stand at the edge of the ice. Dmitry looks down at their feet, then at Anya. “Ready?” 

“Let’s go,” Anya says.

In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to step onto the ice together. Dmitry loses his footing almost immediately, and Anya catches him at the expense of herself. Both of them go tumbling down, landing in a pile of tangled limbs. Dmitry bursts into laughter at the absurdity of it, and the glare Anya was trying to give him doesn’t last long after that.

“Okay, maybe slower this time,” Anya says. 

It takes some trial and error, but Anya does remember the right way to push off and glide, and she teaches it to Dmitry until they can successfully skate next to each other without falling over. It’s slow going, but it’s not as if they have anywhere important to be.

Dmitry reaches for Anya’s hand and finds that she’s already meeting him halfway. She shoots him a small smile, and he smiles back at her. 

“Thanks for doing this,” Anya says after a moment. “It’s nice.”

Dmitry nods. “You’re welcome,” he says.

“My parents used to say they fell in love on an ice rink,” Anya says.

Dmitry knows that from the press, but from Anya’s lips it becomes something new, a reminder that everything Dmitry has now he owes to a sheet of ice and skates just like the ones they’re wearing. He feels, not for the first time, a pang of grief at the thought of Nicholas and Alexandra and all their children that he never got to meet. 

“I wish I could’ve met them,” he tells Anya.

Anya gives him an appraising look. “They would have liked you,” she says.

Dmitry grins. “No, they wouldn’t have.” 

Anya laughs, loud and bright. “No,” she agrees, “they wouldn’t have.” 

They’re silent as they make their way slowly down the ice and turn a corner. City hall stretches out above them in all its imposing glory, a wide block of white stone and detailed architecture not unlike the palace in St. Petersburg, and Anya looks up at it for a long while. “They probably wouldn’t have liked me, either,” she says eventually.

Dmitry squeezes Anya’s hand. After a moment, she squeezes back, and they keep on skating. 

“You know,” Dmitry says into the quiet, “I’ve been thinking about what you said about the lights on Nevsky Prospekt.”

Anya gives him a questioning look. “Oh?” 

Dmitry nods. “I was thinking about how you said you remembered them differently in Petersburg and Petrograd. But that’s not right, because the reality is that the lights haven’t changed. I bet they still look the same in Leningrad, too, because the city never _really_ changes, no matter what you call it.” 

Anya nods. “I know,” she says quietly.

“And so… I just wanted to say that no matter what your name is, whether it’s Anya or Anastasia or Annie, and no matter how much you think you’ve changed, it’s all of you that I love, just the same as I’ll always love Petersburg.” 

Anya stops herself with a scrape of her skates, pulling Dmitry to a halt as well and tugging him back toward her. He goes easily, swallowing hard when she looks up at him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to how beautiful she is up close.

“Dima,” she starts, but then she seems to lose the words. She shakes her head slightly.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Dmitry says.

“Good, because I don’t think I can follow that.” She rolls her eyes, typical Anya from head to toe, and when she kisses him, Dmitry is smiling too much to properly kiss back at first. 


End file.
